Ready For Sleep
by When In Doubt Smile
Summary: The best teachers are the ones that don't even know that they're teaching. Clint Barton is the best teacher and friend Natasha Romanoff has ever had. (Post- movie.) (Clintasha/ Blackhawk friendship or pairing, you choose.)


Disclaimer: The Avengers if property of Marvel. The picture of Manhattan is property of Evan Joseph. (Though if Marvel wanted to give me the Avengers for a present, I wouldn't say no.)

Ready for Sleep

Natasha was cold, which was surprising, considering that she was Russian. A woman of her nationality should not be cold in a place like Manhattan, especially when it was only September and the temperature drop hadn't even really started. Illuminated by the shimmering lights of the city that refused to sleep, the woman could still see the wreckage that had been left by the Chautari. _The Stark tower really _does_ have a magnificent view_, she thought. _Stark certainly wasn't lying about that._

Her body was stiff and sore from the battle she had fought mere hours before, but what was new about that? She couldn't remember the last time she had been free of aches and pains. She looked down at her hands, examining the new cuts that adorned them and tried to guess which would leave scars and which would fade into nothing. With a sudden burst of wind, her mind was torn away from her scars and she started shivering once again. Natasha supposed it made sense that she was cold. Cold reminded her of Russia, of blood that stained and gushed out of ledgers that would never quite be fixed, of screaming children and the feel of a gun's rebound after it had been fired. Cold reminded her of wars. Wars with evil people and good people and people who were not really people at all, but monsters from another world. And because cold reminded her of what she had done wrong in her life, she didn't go and grab a coat from inside.

The redhead in a tank top and shorts chuckled to herself as she thought of her partner's, Clint, accusations that she always tried to give herself frostbite whenever she felt guilty about something she had done. (_Sometimes you have to remember what you've done wrong before you can remember what you can do right, Clint.)_ _Maybe he's right. It wouldn't be the first time, _she smiled and shook her head at the city, the world, which lay before her. Leave it to fate to find the one man that could, with time, read her like an open book and then to make them partners. Clint was the only person who could make her heart skip a beat if he got hit too hard. The only man who could make her have to lie about how she was feeling just to prove that he did not know her as well as he believed. He was the only human being on the face of the whole entire planet that could know that she was lying.

_And that's why he's the only person who can teach me anything. _Natasha knew she was not a particularly humble woman; she would fight you to prove that she was superior no matter what. But she was not a fool. She knew she was flawed and she was willing to admit it when someone came along with a lesson that she needed to learn (not that she would ever admit it to their faces). Natasha Romanoff knew when she had been beaten. And that was exactly what Clint Barton did best. He took her fragile opinions and the defenses that she had so tirelessly built up against the world and destroyed them and showed her how to reconstruct them to make her a better assassin, a better spy, a better partner, and, above all, a better human being. He had taught her so many things. Mercy. Compassion. How to know when enough was enough. How to control her anger. That people were not hers to judge. How to take her mind and make it her own when thoughts that were not hers, thoughts that had been planted there by others, came and tried to changed her back into the monster she had been before he had taken her and made her better. Looking over what was left of Manhattan, Natasha could see the results of Clint's constant and unconscious teaching. _How is it that there are people on the world that are so _good_ that they can teach without even realizing it?_ Before Clint, the Black Widow would have slaughtered all of the city below Natasha, or, even worse, she would have stood back and laughed as monsters invaded the world. But not after Clint. No, she would have never been able to bear the guilt that would have come from the knowledge that she could have done something, but had not. And maybe that was the most important lesson that she Clint had taught her: that the world was not her property, she was the world's.

And when a new burst of wind hit the Stark tower, Natasha stayed sitting down and shivered because she was learning a new lesson: cold reminded her of Clint and what he had given her, and so maybe it was not a bad thing after all.

Author's Note: Natasha, didn't anyone ever teach you that it's rude to be so difficult to write? I hope I've at least somewhat captured the awesomeness that is the character of Natasha Romanoff. As always, thank you for giving me some of your time to read my writing.

Just keep on laughing,

When In Doubt, Smile


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